Ash Thoreau

I think I have figured out a great source of the anxiety and depression I struggle with everyday. I’m going to map it out, and it will probably seem obvious to an outsider. Just cut me some slack and remember, when you’re involved, watching everything close up, it’s a lot more difficult to see the big picture.

My Week:

I work 3 days of 12 hour shifts. I get decent sleep usually before my first shift because my husband is off that day. He watches the kid so I can sleep-in the morning before my shift. I start work overnight and get home at about 0630 the following morning. My husband then leaves for work and I attempt to get some sleep before my toddler wakes up.

The kid, recently, has been waking at 0800. That means I am getting about 1 hour of sleep. Then, my husband tries to get home in the early afternoon so I can sleep again before having to leave for work. If I am lucky, I get 2.5 additional hours of sleep. Unfortunately, the sheer exhaustion is usually not enough to make me pass out, so it’s rare that I get those extra hours.

This is how two of the three 12 hour shifts go. I am a zombie to the world. Short tempered and exhausted. On the fourth day of the week, I only work 4 hours. My husband isn’t able to get home until the evening so I never get the secondary nap that day. However, I get home around 2230 and get a full 7 hours of sleep immediately after.

Then, I get 3 days off. The husband wakes me up at 0600 on the first two days and I will spend the entire morning, afternoon and early evening cleaning and caring for our child. The third day off, my husband is off as well, but usually we end up staying in, either doing housework, or planning our next vacation, while watching YouTube. That, or he plays paintball, leaving me alone again with the kid. It gets old.

Long story long, I am certainly not getting enough sleep throughout the week, and I never get time for myself. I was trying to walk 30 minutes a day on a treadmill but even that is difficult on so little sleep in the first half of the week. And by the time I get to my days off, I have to catch up on house work.

This is how I have lost myself. I don’t have a regular hobby anymore. The things I attempt to start for myself almost always die out before I get anything completed. Before I was married, I used to play paintball with my now husband. My career choice put a stop to that. However, even with my job, I still had time for my other hobbies like photography. Then the kid showed up, essentially taking all other free time I had available.

This is why I have decided, I want to start trying to hike with my kid. I realize we probably won’t get very far, specially in the beginning, but I really don’t care. I need something to get me out of the house. My hope is that it’s something we can start doing while my husband is at work, at least once a week. We will see. It may just end up being walks around parks, considering there isn’t a decent trail anywhere close. Again, it doesn’t matter, so long as I’m out doing something away from the dungeon that is my home.

So I got my kid some good walking/hiking shoes. They will be here on Sunday. I will try to start this new endeavor on my next weekend. I’ll give an update how that goes, whenever we get there.